Scenario 2 — You don’t contact your ex and your ex contacts you. Nice! You respond, they respond… then suddenly… they stop contacting you. You contact him/her several times but he/she never responds.

Or you have contact for a few weeks but it gets harder and harder to find things to say to each other because that connection you had has been lost. After a while contact stops.

“No contact” triggered your ex’s fear of rejection or abandonment, but once you respond, they are reassured you still love and care about them, and don’t need to continue further contact. So while you feel excited that your ex contacted you, your ex contacting you was about his/her issues and not about you.

Scenario 3 — You don’t contact your ex and your ex does not contact you. After the No Contact period, you contact your ex 1) but he/she does not respond or 2) responds just to tell you he/she has moved on, or 3) responds every now and then but it’s like you are bothering him/her or something.

By cutting off all contact, you are taking yourself out of the picture. You leave your ex no option but to learn to live without you. Over time your ex’s life begins to change… he/she is meeting new friends… doing new things… going to new places…etc. You come back after your “no contact”… A LOT has happened and changed! You don’t fit into his/her “new life”, or someone new is in the picture.

A break-up means there is a crack in the relationship. Pull further apart, and that crack will grow bigger. You may even end up creating cracks that weren’t there before you started pulling away.

If your intention is to get over your ex and move on to dating someone new, and you feel that you can’t do it while in contact with your ex, then “No Contact” is a great way to do it.

“No Contact” is designed to create physical DISTANCE between you and your ex.

The psychology behind “No Contact” is that the break-up grieving process (denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) usually lasts upto 3 months (a little more for some). By the end of the grieving period, you should be over the break-up, and ready to move on/start dating someone new.

Some people are really lucky in that they will both complete the grieving period at the same time, are ready to start dating again at the same, have done a lot of work to become “new” to their ex and their ex is attracted to the “new” person they have become. This however is the very rare exception rather than the norm.

In most cases, the dumper will have thought of breaking up a few weeks or even months before it happened, giving him/her a head-start with the grieving process (if they ever grieve the loss of the relationship at all). So while you the dumpee is in Stage One (denial and isolation) of the grieving process, your ex is either in Stage Two (anger), Three (bargaining), Four (depression) or Five (acceptance). By the time you go through stages 2, 3 , 4 and get to acceptance, your ex has long moved on.

If you get to acceptance and are ready to move on, that’s great. But if you get to acceptance and realize that you want your ex back, but it’s been 3 months since you last had contact, you are in for a rude awakening… one that may involve re-starting the grieving process all over!

Even great theories don’t always match reality … and “No Contact” is not even a good theory.

Reconnecting after months of disconnection is a lot harder than you imagine. Most people know how hard it is, until they try to reconnect with their ex. They may get a text here and there, but nothing is ever the same.

10 Comments

Yagnki, I have read many of your articles and some of them make sense. But on ‘no contact’ I don’t think there is anything you can say that will change my mind. ‘No contact” is the best for making someone respect you especially after you have acted needy. Not contacting her is making me strong again so that when I contact her I can show her I am in control of my emotions.

This whole site is what IS recommended. This is THE alternative to no-contact. This is the IT.

But if you are looking for some simple magic solutions like ‘no contact”, you are not going to find it here. The advice here is for mature intelligent adults who think for themselves and make their own decisions, not for people who follow “rules”.

It’s not always as simple as the no contact people tell you. Sometimes the dumped has done things to drive the dumper to the decision of a breakup. in my case I acted very needy and drove him away. I am very proud of the fact that I didn’t do no contact, I thought about it but after reading several of your articles, I chose not to. Our communications has improved drastically mainly because I don’t get anxious and become needy. Just wanted to share this with others. Thanks.

I asked my ex for a break and she thought I wanted to break-up, and so broke up with me. She says she wants a month of no contact to figure out what she wants. But I am so confused because there are many different opinions I don’t know what to follow and what not. Should I continue trying to talk to her or do I do no contact?

If she wants a month of no contact, give it to her. That is not the same as you doing “no contact”, because you did not initiate it and (hopefully) will not ignore her if she reaches out to you in that time she has asked for no-contact.

“No contact” is when you initiate it, cut off all avenues of communication and ignore all attempts by your ex to communicate because you are sticking to some stupid rule.

PS: It’s easy to get confused with all the many different opinions out there. Follow the advice that rings “true” or feels “right” to you.